Proud day for suffragist’s family
Being related to a woman who left her mark on the historic 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition is a point of pride for sisters Phyl Parkes and Noeline Savage.
Their grandmother, Sarah Ann Parker, who was born in 1868, signed the petition seeking the right for New Zealand women to vote when she was 25, working as a loom tender in Petone.
On September 19 of that year, the Electoral Act 1893 was passed, granting that voting right.
The two sisters, now in their 90s, remember their grandmother fondly but they had not known until this year that she had been one of the petition’s signatories.
‘‘We’ve always been proud of her and we never knew about this and so it’s been such a wonderful surprise,’’ Savage said. ‘‘She stood up for us all.’’
In the 125 years that have passed since Parker signed the petition’s 306th sheet, her legacy lives on. Phyl Parkes said: ‘‘I thought she was a very strong-willed woman ... We feel really proud of her because she was there in the beginning of suffrage.’’
Parkes said her grandmother had a history of making courageous decisions, not least was choosing to move across the globe to New Zealand at a young age. ‘‘She was a really special person.’’
Parker was one of 24,000 women who signed the petition, which in its 500-sheet entirety was glued to form a roll stretching 270 metres.
Even illiteracy was no barrier to signing the petition, with some signatories leaving an ‘‘X’’ alongside a witness’ signature because they could not sign their own name.
Kate Sheppard famously called the massive document ‘‘a monster’’.
It was one of 13 petitions that was presented to the House of Representatives on August 11, 1893 in a wheelbarrow but the only one to survive the 125 years since then.
It can now be found on display at the National Library in Thorndon.
Having achieved so much in reaching that historic base camp, our world-beating suffragists might have expected the descendants of that great movement to be even nearer to the summit.
It’s insightful and a little ironic that Kate Sheppard’s face is on our $10 bill, right next to that fiver in your purse or wallet featuring Sir Ed Hillary’s likeness. One conquered the planet’s highest peak while the other established an historic, world-first base camp from which the summit remained so near but so far away, always shrouded in cloud.
One hundred and twenty-five years on, it still is. Both remarkable achievements helped put this country on the map, but as incredible as Hillary’s feat was and remains, it stopped at 29,029 feet.
Sheppard walked that many and cycled plenty more in leading a campaign that overcame a mountain of dissent, dislike and sometimes open disgust to secure for women the right to vote, an obligation and duty that, 125 years on, we all take for granted.
As momentous as it was, it was but one step. Sheppard and the rest of the ‘‘shrieking sisterhood’’ denigrated by editorials of the time would have to wait another 40 years to witness the next great leap for womankind, Elizabeth McCombs’ 1933 Lyttelton by-election win that made her the first woman elected to Parliament. Sheppard died 10 months later, at age 86. The legacy of Sheppard, McCombs and so many others is reflected in the rise of New Zealand’s 40th and current prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, who herself follows in the footsteps of female political pioneers Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark.
Sheppard and Co would likely raise a glass of something non-alcoholic to Sian Elias, the chief justice, and governors-general Cath Tizard, Silvia Cartwright and Patsy Reddy.
They would no doubt celebrate the fact that their footsteps lead to the very top of Stuff, one of the country’s largest media organisations, where Sinead Boucher heads a number of women in senior roles, including editors in many regions around the country.
They might struggle to comprehend that another woman, Raelene Castle, is at the centre of the scrum at Rugby Australia as its chief executive, having already cut her teeth in the mate-mate world of Aussie rugby league.
But having achieved so much in reaching that historic base camp, our world-beating suffragists might have expected the descendants of that great movement to be even nearer to the summit. Much work remains: the gender pay gap is a stubborn reminder that we climb that mountain together but the rewards can be very different, depending on our gender.
The women noted above remind us of how far many have come, but also how far we have to go in so many other industries, where few females sit around the board table and many continue to bang heads on glass ceilings. Despite the passionate protestations of people such as Theresa Gattung.
Sexual harassment and worse remain issues in this country and around the world, as evidenced by the MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
But in responding to these and so many other challenges, people of all countries are honouring the legacy of a legendary Kiwi by continuing to highlight the inequities and working mightily to overcome them.
They may not be at the summit, wherever that may be, but they continue to lift their eyes and voices and climb.